Latest / The Price of Music / Ed Sheeran beats copyright appeal over Thinking Out Loud, Hipgnosis Songs Fund catalog valued at $2.4bn

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Ed Sheeran beats copyright appeal over Thinking Out Loud, Hipgnosis Songs Fund catalog valued at $2.4bn · The Price of Music

• 0:07
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music, the show that looks at
• 0:10
  the money behind the music industry, with me, Steve Lamack
• 0:12
  and Music Allies head of insight Stuart Dredge.
• 0:15
  Lots of stories again to bring you this week, including a major
• 0:19
  new lawsuit involving the Universal Music Group, also Ed
• 0:23
  Sheeran's copyright case and massive profits at YouTube
• 0:27
  amongst the rest of the stories we'll cover.
• 0:28
  But we should probably start. But with last weeks budget and
• 0:32
  what effect that might have on the music.
• 0:35
  I mean, it was always going to be a tight budget.
• 0:37
  There wasn't much the government was going to give away.
• 0:39
  Although strangely, there are rumors already circulating that
• 0:44
  Labor are hoping that by next year there might be more in it
• 0:48
  for the creative industries. Although that won't be a lot of
• 0:52
  consolation to a lot of artists and people working in the music
• 0:55
  industry right now, not least our friends who run small live
• 0:59
  venues around the country. In the wake of the budget
• 1:02
  announcements, the Music Venue Trust has issued a dire forecast
• 1:07
  of what the budget might mean for them, which all stems from a
• 1:10
  reduction in business rate relief for grassroots venues.
• 1:14
  Tell us more about this, Stuart. Yeah, we're diving into the
• 1:17
  weeds of Financial Policy straight from the start, which
• 1:19
  is what we both we both enjoy always.
• 1:22
  But yeah, this is this, this dates back to COVID, doesn't it?
• 1:24
  And like, I think in 2020, the government gave retail and
• 1:28
  hospitality and Ledger businesses, I think it was a 75%
• 1:31
  discount on their business rates tax to help them tie through.
• 1:34
  And that was due to run out in April next year.
• 1:37
  And so the good news is that's been extended.
• 1:39
  The bad news is it will only be 40% now.
• 1:41
  So you'll only get 40% off their business loop.
• 1:44
  And then there were some stats weren't there.
• 1:45
  The Music Venues Trust actually did some, crunched some numbers
• 1:47
  quite quickly on this and said that reckoned that venue,
• 1:50
  grassroots venues had to pay an additional £7 million in taxes
• 1:55
  from a sector that only made a gross profit of £2.9 million
• 1:59
  across the 830 venues. So I mean, you were talking
• 2:01
  about earlier, there's it's money that isn't there at the
• 2:04
  moment, which is why they're worried.
• 2:07
  Yes. So it's, it will be an
• 2:09
  additional cost spread across obviously there's their
• 2:12
  membership is something like 800 around 800 venues.
• 2:16
  So across the 800 venues, they'll need to find 7,000,000
• 2:21
  lbs, which I think they're saying we'll particularly at
• 2:24
  this time where the number of gigs are down for reasons which,
• 2:29
  you know, we've discussed before in the programme.
• 2:32
  But there's less gigs going on obviously with, you know, the,
• 2:36
  the increased costs, which are providing, you know, such a
• 2:40
  challenge for small venues already.
• 2:42
  So that's, you know, in energy bills and, and rental increases.
• 2:47
  And now, yes, less in the way of business rate relief, which
• 2:51
  they're saying, I think they're saying it could place as many as
• 2:54
  350 venues at immediate risk of closure.
• 2:59
  I mean, that's, that's a frightening figure.
• 3:02
  It is and they did some, some numbers on that and said I think
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  that's more than 12,000 jobs, more than 75,000 events and over
• 3:08
  £250 million in economic activity.
• 3:10
  It's one of those frustrating things because Labour is very
• 3:13
  much giving this message about it wants, it needs growth, it
• 3:16
  wants economic growth. And this is 1 area.
• 3:18
  But it was so there was, there was some, there's some kind of,
• 3:21
  I don't know if you call it jam ahead this in jam tomorrow.
• 3:24
  Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor did say that in the future, I
• 3:26
  think from April 2026, they're going to lower tax rates for the
• 3:30
  retail hospital. So in like a year and a half
• 3:33
  time, the overall tax rates will come down for venues.
• 3:38
  But the worry that the, the trust said is that how many
• 3:41
  venues do we lose before then? And I thought it was quite
• 3:43
  interesting because they, they put this announcement and they
• 3:45
  said the music, they've got three ideas, like 3, three ways
• 3:48
  to kind of, to stop disaster happening.
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  One was the government could rethink, which probably seems
• 3:53
  unlikely. Realistically, it could create a
• 3:57
  kind of £7 million fund that those venues could draw on to
• 4:00
  tide them over. And the third option was they
• 4:03
  could add 50 P to the price of every ticket so they could put
• 4:05
  ticket prices up to kind of help cover this shortfall.
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  And it said, that's not what we want to do.
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  It's not a good idea at the moment.
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  But, and it's weird because like, you know, you know the
• 4:14
  means of any choice. You know, Mark David, like he's
• 4:16
  not. They, they, they, they give
• 4:18
  blunt figures, but they don't really, they don't, they don't
• 4:21
  like cry wolf. They don't catastrophize.
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  But there was this quote that said the only possible option to
• 4:26
  stop a complete collapse of live music in our communities.
• 4:29
  So it really is a dire warning. And that they're not given to
• 4:31
  kind of just, you know, saying that kind of quote for the sake
• 4:35
  of it or to kind of create a headline.
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  They really are concerned about this.
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  So yeah, it's kind of worrying. Do you remember the Select
• 4:42
  Committee which looked into grassroots venues and the
• 4:47
  grassroots, you know, live circuits, which was held earlier
• 4:51
  this year? I think the interesting thing
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  now will be in response to what music venue trusts are saying is
• 4:57
  what happens next with that, because the the word is that the
• 5:02
  government's response to the committee's findings will be
• 5:06
  published sometime this month, possibly even next week.
• 5:11
  But I think that report now that will be even more important with
• 5:15
  regards to where solutions might be found to help offset this
• 5:20
  crisis. Otherwise, as you say, I mean,
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  we could, we could see a lot more venues boarding up their
• 5:26
  doors, which won't be good for anyone.
• 5:29
  If you are interested, by the way, in finding out more about
• 5:31
  this story and its economic implications, She just mentions
• 5:34
  Mark, Mark David from the Music Venue Trust has written a really
• 5:38
  excellent piece on his Sub stack page, which is well worth the
• 5:41
  read. It's it's quite depressing, but
• 5:44
  it's very comprehensive and it's very informative.
• 5:48
  Right now. This next story, this you're
• 5:50
  saying Stuart, is the big story of the week, which broke today.
• 5:55
  We're recording on Tuesday. It's so big listeners, that
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  Stuart WhatsApp us at about 6:50 this morning.
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  I mean, don't get me wrong, it's always nice to hear from you,
• 6:07
  Stuart, but it involves Universal and the distribution
• 6:12
  company believe amongst others. What's happening and why is this
• 6:16
  story so seismic? Yeah, well, this is one of those
• 6:19
  stories like, like some lawsuits you can see coming a mile off,
• 6:22
  like the AI music lawsuits earlier this year, Like you
• 6:24
  could see they were going to happen, but this just kind of
• 6:26
  came out of the blue last night. So yeah, it's Universal Music
• 6:30
  Group. It's Abco Music, who have rights
• 6:33
  to The Rolling Stones, Sam Cooke, you know, a bunch of kind
• 6:37
  of heritage music, and Concorde, who has rights to a lot of
• 6:40
  music. So it's three different
• 6:41
  companies and they're seeing Believe in TuneCore.
• 6:44
  So just to kind of set the context, Believe is an
• 6:46
  independent music company. It works with a lot of emerging
• 6:49
  artists, but it also has worked with Fat Boy Slim, it worked
• 6:51
  with Bjork and Anthony Anthony Rather Muir Massa came through
• 6:54
  there. And then TuneCore is its
• 6:56
  distribution subsidiary. So TuneCore is somewhere where
• 6:58
  any artist can sign up, put their music out, but it's also
• 7:01
  worked with like 9 Inch Nails, Moby and Public Enemy.
• 7:03
  So these are two companies that are well established.
• 7:07
  And yeah, this lawsuit, it's one of those lawsuits that right
• 7:09
  from the start just throws all these hay making punches.
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  So they claim that Believe is being used by, I quote,
• 7:15
  fraudulent artists and pirate record labels who are infringing
• 7:20
  on the names and work of big artists.
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  And it's a quite a funny list saying that the people of people
• 7:25
  who've released music through Believe in Tune core, there's an
• 7:28
  artist called Kendrick Lama. So LAAMAR, there's Ariana Grande
• 7:34
  and Jutin Bieber. So these are three of the
• 7:38
  examples given of like artists, you know, fraudulent artists
• 7:40
  have released stuff images, but also it's about accusing them of
• 7:43
  releasing speed up and remix songs that pirate the work of
• 7:46
  big artists. And also claiming that believers
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  used YouTube's copyright system, content ID to kind of claim
• 7:52
  royalties from other companies. The one thing it's want to say
• 7:55
  is because of the way Believe in Tunkar are, this is about music
• 7:59
  released through them. It's not necessary that these
• 8:02
  companies are choosing to release this music.
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  They're thinking, right, we're going to kind of copy Justin
• 8:06
  Bieber and release this. It's that they're the pipeline
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  allegedly for this stuff being released with.
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  So that's the kind of the accusation here.
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  And yeah, Universal, this lawsuit says, Believe as a
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  company built on industrial strength, copyright
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  infringement, not limited to cheating artists on major
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  labels, but artists on independent labels as well.
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  And that's kind of a key point because you could look at this
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  and say, oh, Universal Music is suing a big independent company.
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  This is about squashing independent music.
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  And the lawsuit is trying, trying to make that point that
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  they're not just doing this to major artists.
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  This is this is something effects independent labels too.
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  So that's the gist of it. Right, industrial to say that
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  again, industrial strength. Copyright.
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  Infringement. Yeah.
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  I mean, they're not pulling any punches well.
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  No. And it's so there's a couple of
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  bits of context. So 1 is that I mean believe in
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  TuneCore, one of the companies, one of the pairs of companies
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  who are kind of a challenge to the way major levels do business
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  because they are an alternative. So for an emerging artist, you
• 9:04
  could put your music out through TuneCore, for example, if that
• 9:07
  does well believe might sign you to their because they're kind of
• 9:09
  linked, but also they they can work with established artists
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  who are maybe coming out of a major label do and say, I want
• 9:15
  to go independent. So one way of seeing this is
• 9:19
  Universal Music and these other two companies are taking aim at
• 9:22
  one of the biggest companies. That's a challenger.
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  And there's, you know, obviously there's competitive stuff there,
• 9:27
  but there's also been and we've talked about this, there's been
• 9:29
  this backdrop of concerns this year about some of the music
• 9:32
  that is being put out through distributors.
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  Like, you know, we talked about TikTok and Merlin recently and
• 9:37
  TikTok saying we're not going to have a deal with Merlin, the
• 9:39
  independent license agency, because some of their members
• 9:42
  were uploading infringing music or music involved in fraud.
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  So there is this big, so you get like discussion or bigger worry
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  about when you're a company is basically a pipe for anyone to
• 9:52
  release music on Spotify, Apple Music and so on.
• 9:55
  Are you doing enough to make sure that what comes through
• 9:57
  your pipes is is not infringing anyone's copyright, It's not
• 10:01
  speeding up someone's song. So there is there is a wider
• 10:04
  issue here that is, are some of these companies being witting or
• 10:09
  unwitting, you know, the kind of pipelines for stuff that we
• 10:12
  don't want? But yeah, I mean, the other
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  thing to say is Believe has yet to comment.
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  I did ping them this morning just after I pinged you
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  actually, and said, do you have a statement?
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  They haven't put a statement out at the time we're talking.
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  They probably will have by tomorrow, by by the time we go
• 10:25
  out, I would think. But we haven't heard their side
• 10:27
  of the story. The other, the other fun thing
• 10:30
  here is that earlier in the year, Believe nearly got bought
• 10:32
  by Warner Music Group. So Believe was kind of up for
• 10:35
  sale. Warner Music Group was looking
• 10:38
  around and it got the numbers to kind of.
• 10:40
  And then Warner pulled out and said, no, actually we won't do
• 10:42
  that. But if it had bought it, imagine
• 10:45
  you could have now Universal Music suing a Warner Music
• 10:47
  subsidiary, which will be really spicy.
• 10:48
  But unfortunately for for drama fans, that's not.
• 10:51
  But yeah, so it's a big deal and it's all we've had is the
• 10:54
  lawsuit filing published and a statement from Universal Music
• 10:57
  Group. But we will hear more from
• 10:58
  Believe in the days ahead and hopefully it will have its side
• 11:02
  of the story and we can kind of judge.
• 11:04
  OK, we'll come back to that. So from 1 disagreement, 1 case
• 11:09
  that's set to roll on, then to one which has been settled.
• 11:13
  Ed Sheeran has beaten a copyright appeal over his hit
• 11:16
  single Thinking Out Loud. Who was making the claim and how
• 11:20
  has Sheeran emerged triumphant from this then?
• 11:24
  Yeah, he's beating it again and again and again, actually, in
• 11:27
  one of those cases where you win, then you win on uphill and
• 11:29
  then win another one. So this is about Marvin Gaye's
• 11:32
  Let's Get It On and Thinking Out Loud.
• 11:34
  And this has been rumbling for years, hasn't it?
• 11:36
  It's like, does does Thinking Out Loud infringe Marvin Gaye?
• 11:40
  But it's actually a company called Structured Asset Sales
• 11:43
  SAS, which kind of you're being sued by the SES.
• 11:45
  That's quite scary, doesn't it? They, they just parachute in, I
• 11:49
  think, and knock you off. But it's got, I think I've, I've
• 11:53
  found the stat. It's got 11 point, 11.11%
• 11:56
  interest in the royalties from Let's Get It On.
• 11:58
  I think it owns the share of the royalties from one of the
• 12:00
  writers. And it's been chasing and
• 12:02
  Sheeran saying you infringe this.
• 12:05
  And yeah, so it was, it was not back in court.
• 12:07
  There was another case and that was not back too.
• 12:09
  And now an appeals court has backed it.
• 12:11
  And there's some really interesting stuff that's come
• 12:13
  out of this, which is one of the points is like, it was about the
• 12:15
  core progression in the song, just the core progression that
• 12:18
  Ed Sheeran did. And I think the judge in one of
• 12:20
  the original rulings pointed out that that same core progression
• 12:23
  was used 29 times before Let's Get it On and then 23 times
• 12:27
  afterwards before Ed Sheeran released his song.
• 12:31
  And the appeals court kind of referred to that and said, look,
• 12:33
  if we protect, protecting the elements could stifle
• 12:36
  creativity. So if we say you can't use that
• 12:38
  same court, this could stifle. So, yeah.
• 12:41
  So it's kind of it's a victory for Ed Sheeran.
• 12:43
  But I mean, it's it's been it's been going on for so long,
• 12:45
  hasn't it? Like, I feel like we've been
• 12:47
  reading headlines about Ed Sheeran being sued for
• 12:49
  plagiarism and he's having to spend a lot of time or his
• 12:52
  people have been a lot in court. And although he's not
• 12:54
  necessarily there overseeing all the legal agreement, it has been
• 12:57
  a big, a big cloud hanging over him, which which can't be much
• 13:00
  fun. So this might settle it, but you
• 13:01
  never know. I never know when there's
• 13:02
  another appeals court above the one that said no, you know, so
• 13:06
  it could carry on. But you talked about this
• 13:08
  recently, didn't you? I think I felt you said this
• 13:10
  recently, like this idea that when companies buy music rights,
• 13:15
  sometimes they might have more incentive to look for this kind
• 13:17
  of thing and sue. Yeah, I think that's the thing,
• 13:22
  isn't it? If you have invested, if you
• 13:24
  have bought a catalogue as well as just seeing the royalties
• 13:29
  come in, then the other way of making money out of your
• 13:32
  acquisition is just, you know, offensive.
• 13:35
  Get get on the offensive, go out and start suing people.
• 13:39
  And that's one way of, you know, getting your return on, on
• 13:44
  having purchased these songs. That's some companies, yeah.
• 13:47
  Some companies are are probably looking around, they've probably
• 13:50
  got people in a basement somewhere just listening for
• 13:52
  things that sound a bit like something else before, you know,
• 13:56
  before then taking artists to court.
• 13:58
  Yeah. Whereas musicians, I mean, there
• 14:00
  was a really nice story this week, I thought about Elvis
• 14:02
  Costello and Olivia Rodrigo. Did you see that?
• 14:04
  One. No, I didn't.
• 14:06
  So Olivia Rodrigo's got a song called Brutal, and people have
• 14:08
  been saying that sounds a lot like Pump It Up by Elvis
• 14:11
  Costello. That's been kind of something
• 14:12
  that's noted and people said, oh, it's plagiarized.
• 14:15
  And Elvis Costello came out with a reaction.
• 14:17
  He said, this is fine by me. It's how rock'n'roll works.
• 14:21
  You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand
• 14:23
  new toy. And he talked about some of the
• 14:24
  things that he'd he'd rift off with his own music.
• 14:28
  So it's a weird thing, isn't I think.
• 14:29
  I think sometimes musicians do get crossed, don't they?
• 14:33
  Or they ask for credit, like, look, you've you've got my
• 14:35
  thing. I want to I want a credit on
• 14:36
  this. See, people know it was my work.
• 14:38
  But they often tend also of them are relaxed and they talk about
• 14:41
  well, actually I was influenced by stuff and I wasn't
• 14:44
  plagiarizing it. So I understand this.
• 14:46
  It was a it was Lord, I think did a song that was very, very,
• 14:49
  very much like Primal Scream. It felt it was very loaded.
• 14:53
  I think Bobby Gillespie went again when that's fine.
• 14:57
  You're just doing your own, which to be fair, a man who
• 14:59
  would be throwing stones out of a greenhouse if he was talking
• 15:02
  about about music sounding like the influences.
• 15:05
  But I think that's like so I think that's where you know,
• 15:08
  this Ed Sheeran case. It may bubble up again, but the
• 15:12
  courts seem to have said actually we're going to kind of
• 15:15
  we're not going to let too much overreach happen of saying
• 15:17
  here's a court sequence, you can sue for it and this.
• 15:20
  So that may stem some of the potential lawsuits of people
• 15:23
  saying people chancing their arm, I guess.
• 15:28
  I wonder how much money they're down the hole in legal fees now
• 15:31
  after various cases and appeals. I mean, they must have invested
• 15:36
  quite a lot in the hope that, you know, they were going to
• 15:39
  eventually win this, which we'll see if it comes back to haunt us
• 15:43
  again. This this story.
• 15:45
  Here's. The problem actually, I think
• 15:46
  the problem now is if Ed Sheeran hasn't got to spend money on
• 15:49
  lawyers, he might spend more money on Ipswich Town.
• 15:51
  And I'm, I'm not, I'm really not keen to see that happen.
• 15:53
  So I need he needs to be tied up on legal fees for a few more
• 15:57
  years in my opinion. For new listeners, this is an
• 16:00
  East Anglian football rivalry. That's all I'll say next.
• 16:04
  Well, we sort of tackle part of this story in our last Listeners
• 16:08
  questions episode when we talked about the threats from promoters
• 16:11
  to cancel Oasis tickets, which had been resold on secondary
• 16:15
  ticket sites. And I said, well, I mean,
• 16:17
  they've got to do something at some point.
• 16:20
  They can't just leave this threat hanging in the air.
• 16:23
  Now they've made it. But then I mean, it was only a
• 16:26
  few days afterwards that's they came out and they, they have the
• 16:30
  promoters and Oasis reiterated that they will be cancelling
• 16:34
  anything up to the figure is 50,000 tickets, which have
• 16:39
  appeared on unauthorized resale platforms.
• 16:42
  This in a bid to combat ticket scalping.
• 16:45
  So it's happening. They have been busy and they it
• 16:47
  looks like they are going ahead with this then.
• 16:50
  Yeah, so they reckon about 4% of the tickets sold were listed
• 16:53
  elsewhere and somewhere there, because you could list them on
• 16:55
  Ticketmaster and you could list them on Twickets, couldn't you?
• 16:57
  There was 2 you could. And so they reckon 4%, which
• 17:00
  interestingly, so it was Live Nation, the promoter SGM were
• 17:03
  talking to BBC about this and they were like, actually 4% is
• 17:06
  quite good. And they were saying that often
• 17:07
  it's 20% from major tours, as many as a fit of tickets from
• 17:10
  major tours can end up on these sites.
• 17:12
  So they were kind of saying we've done quite well in
• 17:14
  stopping this happening. But yeah, and all they said was
• 17:18
  they'll be cancelled and sold again at face value through
• 17:20
  Ticketmaster. And that's quite an important
• 17:21
  point. They're not putting on sale for
• 17:23
  £350. They are going to sell them for
• 17:24
  face value. And if they do it by mistake, if
• 17:28
  you haven't listed them elsewhere, you can ask for your
• 17:31
  case to be investigated. So there probably will be some
• 17:33
  examples of people who didn't actually do anything wrong, and
• 17:36
  they've thought about that, but they haven't really said much
• 17:38
  about how they're doing and how they identified them, which I
• 17:41
  think is one. It's one of those areas that has
• 17:42
  to remain murky because they don't want to give away the
• 17:45
  techniques to the people who are scalping touting.
• 17:49
  But yeah, so it's good news. I mean, for racist fans who
• 17:51
  missed out, it means there'll be 50,000 tickets coming on sale
• 17:54
  for face value. And it'll be interesting to see
• 17:57
  how they do that. My my assumption would be they
• 18:00
  may might go back to the people who've registered who didn't get
• 18:03
  them and find some way of opening up to them first.
• 18:06
  Yeah. I don't think there's still
• 18:07
  going to be quite an outcry though.
• 18:09
  I think when the emails start turning up in inboxes of ticket
• 18:12
  holders who've, you know, gone through these secondary sites,
• 18:15
  when they say your ticket is no longer valid, I think there's
• 18:18
  going to be quite an outcry at at that point.
• 18:21
  It's going to be another it's it'll be another story.
• 18:24
  I mean, I think these Oasis, the Oasis tour, these gigs, which I
• 18:28
  mean, given that I don't even have until next year, they're
• 18:30
  months away. But this, this whole tour has
• 18:33
  been a it's been a gift for news editors, isn't it?
• 18:36
  Well, I mean, there's just acres of copy.
• 18:38
  But it's also filling the gap left by the fact they're not
• 18:40
  doing any interviews as well. Like, you know, you've got to
• 18:42
  you've got to write about something.
• 18:43
  I mean, I, I do, you know, we were speculating about who this
• 18:45
  port ads will be a few weeks ago.
• 18:47
  And that's been the only stories coming out that aren't ticket
• 18:49
  related. I think cast and Richard
• 18:50
  Ashcroft have signed up so far. So there is So like any any news
• 18:54
  on the these gigs is kind of getting blown up because no one
• 18:57
  or Liam aren't talking. Yeah, yeah, it'll be, it'll be
• 19:01
  the speculation around new material next.
• 19:03
  That will be the next story. I mean, the only, the only in
• 19:06
  terms of sort of that's the national press and pop music, I
• 19:11
  think they're only competitors at the moment seem to be
• 19:13
  Coldplay and Coldplay have had to resort to falling through a
• 19:16
  stage to get back in the websites.
• 19:21
  And did you see that? Do you see Chris Martin fall
• 19:23
  through a trapdoor on stage? Yeah, this keeps happening,
• 19:27
  isn't it? Didn't I think Olivia Rodrigo
• 19:29
  had something that like, what is it for trapdoors on stages and
• 19:32
  people falling through them? You sort of you sort of think
• 19:34
  there be a union saying, okay, how do we make sure this didn't
• 19:36
  happen again? Let's close the trapdoor.
• 19:38
  There we go. Do.
• 19:40
  You know, I fell off a stage once live on air.
• 19:43
  Did you live on Radio One? Yeah, it was Steve.
• 19:46
  It was the IT was the enemy tour.
• 19:47
  Do you remember when the enemy did, you know, a showcase tour
• 19:51
  at the start of the year with four axe on.
• 19:53
  And we were we were taking the gig live to air with Oxford
• 19:57
  Brookes University and I went on stage.
• 20:00
  So we're live on it went on stage to introduce Bang called
• 20:02
  JJ 72 if you remember them. And I walked on, did the did the
• 20:07
  link what did most of the link? And then as I walked to the side
• 20:10
  of the stage to let the band come on, said, Will you please
• 20:14
  welcome JJ? 72 There was a there was a gap,
• 20:20
  right? There was a gap between the
• 20:22
  stage and the monitor desk, which in the dark I hadn't
• 20:25
  noticed and I just fell through this fell through this gap.
• 20:29
  One one of the one of the other bands on the build the rock band
• 20:32
  Amen. One of Amen's crew had to come
• 20:35
  and pull me out. Was it like, was it like an only
• 20:39
  forcing horses for where you just go like.
• 20:42
  Sort of what I mean, Can you imagine filling in the Fort?
• 20:45
  Have you been injured at work? Yeah, I felt.
• 20:48
  Yeah, I fell off. So which reminds me, actually,
• 20:50
  this is something we must look into at some point, how much it
• 20:52
  costs promoters for the various types of insurance which they
• 20:57
  have to take out. When do?
• 20:59
  You know, like a phone call where they go, right?
• 21:01
  How many trapdoors on stage 06? That'll be 100 grand mate.
• 21:05
  Sorry, you've been here before. That's a matter for another day.
• 21:09
  What's next? Oh yes, the Hypnosis Songs Fund
• 21:12
  catalogue has been valued at almost $2.4 billion.
• 21:16
  As I mentioned, we are picking up new listeners all the time,
• 21:18
  so some people might not be aware of what the Hypnosis Songs
• 21:22
  Fund is. Do you want to briefly just give
• 21:25
  us the background into this valuation?
• 21:28
  Yeah, sure. So Hypnosis Songs Fund was one
• 21:30
  of those companies that just acquired music catalogues, the
• 21:33
  songwriting recorded catalogues, a huge amount of like big name
• 21:37
  artists from, I've got a list here in front of me, Red Hot
• 21:41
  Chili Peppers, Mark Ronson, Lindsay Buckingham, Fleetwood
• 21:44
  Mac, Shakira, all kinds of Neil Young.
• 21:47
  And there was a long saga, wasn't it?
• 21:48
  We talked about, like you say, people might not have listened
• 21:50
  to it at the time about the company was in financial
• 21:53
  trouble. Then it was a subject of a
• 21:55
  bidding war. Then it got bought by a big
• 21:56
  company called Blackstone, one of the big investment companies.
• 22:00
  And now, yeah, now it's had its catalogue.
• 22:02
  So the music that it's owns revalued.
• 22:04
  And it's one of those stories that if you're not in the
• 22:06
  financial industry, sounds bonkers because Hypnosis Songs
• 22:10
  Fund was bought in July for $1.58 billion, but it's
• 22:15
  catalogue of music was valued at 2.2 billion at the time.
• 22:19
  So Blackstone bought this thing for 1.6 billion and immediately
• 22:22
  they're like $700 million up on the deal because the music is
• 22:25
  worth much more, which is kind of one is crazy corporate
• 22:27
  things. But yeah, so it's been revealed
• 22:29
  by a company called Kroll Bond Rating Agency, so one of those
• 22:32
  big financial ratings firms. And he reckons the catalogue is
• 22:35
  now worth $2.36 billion. So it's been growing.
• 22:40
  And that is a good. That is good news for hypnosis
• 22:42
  because this helps it in various ways, helps it if it wants to
• 22:46
  raise money to buy more catalogues, helps it seem like a
• 22:49
  good steward of that music. It's doing a good job increasing
• 22:51
  the value. And it's kind of a reminder as
• 22:55
  well that like these companies buying catalogues have their ups
• 22:59
  and downs. Like they can run out of money
• 23:00
  to buy more and they have to then figure out what to do.
• 23:03
  But the music itself is always still valuable.
• 23:05
  Like the music itself doesn't suddenly become worth much less.
• 23:08
  Well, I was going to, I was going to say that though, but
• 23:10
  surely some bands, you know, go in or out of fashion.
• 23:15
  So does the catalogues value go up when say, I mean say with
• 23:20
  somebody like if you own the Oasis back catalogue, surely
• 23:24
  that's becomes worth more. Now the valuation would go up,
• 23:28
  wouldn't it? At that point, in the same way
• 23:30
  that a band splits up, or a member of the band leaves in
• 23:34
  disgrace, or something cataclysmic happens to that
• 23:37
  band, then the value of their catalogue goes from whatever it
• 23:40
  is, you know, $1,000,000 to 0 virtually overnight.
• 23:45
  Yeah, kind of. It's really fascinating because
• 23:47
  I mean, there've been some stories recently about, I mean,
• 23:49
  so someone cataclysmic news. So Diddy is in the news a lot
• 23:52
  recently for terrible reasons. And there were a bunch of
• 23:55
  stories about how his dreams had gone up because it was in the
• 23:58
  news. So one, some of those things,
• 24:00
  you might assume that everyone would suddenly stop listening to
• 24:02
  him. Actually streams went up, which
• 24:04
  arguably means catalogues worth more.
• 24:05
  But you're right. But I think part of the part of
• 24:08
  the reason investors like the idea of music is it's kind of
• 24:14
  stable in that if you've got a band with a catalogue of music,
• 24:18
  there might be an Oasis style event where they reform and
• 24:20
  suddenly it goes up. That's good.
• 24:21
  But overall, if nothing else is happening, it just tends to kind
• 24:24
  of grow because more people are coming onto streaming, more
• 24:28
  people are subscribing. So the money's going up.
• 24:30
  So people like it. Like music apparently is more
• 24:34
  predictable than other things you can invest in because you
• 24:37
  can kind of, you can take a someone like Neil Young for
• 24:39
  example, you could take a look at, analyse the catalogue, how
• 24:41
  many students it's been doing, how it's been growing.
• 24:44
  And you can look ahead 235 years and say, well, this is what we
• 24:47
  think it's going to carry on doing with some degree of
• 24:49
  confidence. And even if I mean horrible
• 24:54
  things about Neil Young is one of those artists who's a certain
• 24:56
  age where he might die and that would be the big event that
• 24:59
  would happen. But even then there might be a
• 25:02
  short term spike. But overall the pattern would be
• 25:04
  this. So, yeah.
• 25:05
  So if you're a hypnosis, this is part of your argument is that
• 25:08
  this catalogue is growing in value.
• 25:10
  It's not risky. And short of all these artists
• 25:13
  suddenly having some terrible thing where no one listens to
• 25:16
  anymore, it's a good. Yeah.
• 25:17
  So it's. But the other thing as well is
• 25:20
  hypnosis is trying to raise money at the moment.
• 25:22
  They're doing this thing where it's called asset based
• 25:24
  securitisation, which I feel like we should get Kieran in
• 25:27
  from the post of footballs talk about this.
• 25:29
  I suspect he would would be much better than me.
• 25:31
  But it's when you basically say, I've got these assets, these
• 25:33
  music catalogues, I'm going to use them to raise money so
• 25:36
  people will kind of. So it's a different kind of
• 25:39
  investment. And Hymnos is doing that at the
• 25:41
  moment with some songs by I think who is it, Red Hot Chili
• 25:44
  Peppers, Neil Young, Journey, The Chainsmokers and Shakira,
• 25:47
  which is a corking Glastonbury Sunday lineup in the making.
• 25:51
  So again, yeah, this story about its catalogue has been valued a
• 25:54
  bit higher. There's a knock on effect that
• 25:56
  it will help it do the stuff it wants to do over the coming
• 25:58
  months in terms of raising more money and buying more music.
• 26:02
  This next story, now this is, it's one of those I have no idea
• 26:07
  what this involves or what it's about.
• 26:08
  I don't even know how you pronounce the company's name,
• 26:11
  but it says here, thank you, producer Guy Music fintech
• 26:14
  startup Duetti has secured $114 million of new funding for.
• 26:21
  For what? Who?
• 26:22
  Who are they? What's what's this about?
• 26:26
  What? Is going on here.
• 26:27
  So Duetti is one of those companies that buys music
• 26:29
  catalogues, but it's not just buying music from kind of famous
• 26:34
  established heritage artists. It's actually worked with more
• 26:36
  than 500 artists. It's big thing as independent
• 26:38
  artists, it will work with them. It will, it will buy their
• 26:41
  spend. Like I think it's between like
• 26:43
  it will spend between $10,000 and three million on buying
• 26:46
  catalogues from independent artists and it helps them to
• 26:49
  earn money from that music by working those catalogues.
• 26:51
  So it's it's like in that same space hypnosis, but kind of
• 26:53
  looking at more independent artists and current artists.
• 26:56
  OK, all right, all right. I get, I get it now.
• 26:59
  There was, there was actually quite a good link then between
• 27:02
  these two stories, if I, if I knew what was going on.
• 27:05
  Well, anyway, we've done it. Yeah, but.
• 27:07
  So it's one of these $140 million that's a big funding
• 27:10
  round. And then when it, when I, when
• 27:12
  you look into it, they've raised $34 million from like venture
• 27:15
  capital firms or traditional investment.
• 27:17
  And they've also done one of these which was just talking
• 27:19
  about asset backed securitization things to, to
• 27:22
  raise another $80 million. So again, saying we've got a
• 27:24
  catalogue of music, it's valuable.
• 27:26
  Will you kind of lend us some money based on this?
• 27:29
  Do you find it a bit weird that we're talking about these
• 27:30
  figures and these companies who are spending millions of pounds
• 27:35
  buying up catalogue rather than talking about record labels
• 27:41
  spending millions of pounds on developing new talent?
• 27:44
  I think that's that's sometimes that fries my brain sometimes
• 27:49
  just looking at the amount of money that's flying around, you
• 27:53
  know, people's back catalogues at the same time that, you know,
• 27:57
  bands and, you know, quite newish bands are struggling and
• 28:01
  we're not, you know, possibly producing as many, you know,
• 28:05
  acts as we should. It's true and directly is one of
• 28:10
  those interesting companies because so one of those one of
• 28:14
  those big you've followed this point in the industry like this
• 28:16
  idea of you don't need a major label to release your music
• 28:19
  that's been around for a while. You don't need to sign into a
• 28:21
  major label. You can do blah, blah.
• 28:23
  And one of the missing pieces of that has always been funding for
• 28:26
  the artists, like where you get an advance from a major label
• 28:31
  and that's what you use when you're recording and to fund
• 28:32
  yourself until the royalties come in.
• 28:35
  And so Duetti is one of those companies trying to figure out
• 28:37
  what's the alternative. How can we, how can we fund
• 28:41
  independent artists so that they can kind of go about their stuff
• 28:43
  and keep their ownership of their music.
• 28:45
  So this is actually an example of one of the one of the
• 28:48
  companies that's sort of looking to position themselves as a way
• 28:52
  for artists to self fund, self self invest in development if
• 28:56
  they're not going down the label route.
• 28:59
  And it is, it's a lot of money. Like you realize how much like
• 29:01
  these numbers we talk about when you get into the world of
• 29:03
  finance and and big finance firms.
• 29:06
  So the so directly says it's going to have a lot more cash to
• 29:09
  buy catalogues. It can work with a lot more
• 29:10
  artists. It's at 500 or so so far, but it
• 29:13
  can work with a lot more artists now.
• 29:15
  And it's building technology as well to help those artists make
• 29:17
  money. So technology kind of to help
• 29:19
  them with marketing and putting the music out.
• 29:21
  So yeah, it's suddenly it's like it's one of those things where
• 29:25
  we, I mean, I've been writing about them for a while and it
• 29:27
  was always like this doing this. It's working with this Italian
• 29:30
  artist is doing this kind of project.
• 29:32
  It was always kind of quite an emerging company.
• 29:36
  And now suddenly it's got this much money.
• 29:37
  So it's, it's, yeah, it has come out of the blue, but it's
• 29:39
  interesting and, and it could be a positive story for the artists
• 29:43
  they're working with who are like, right, we need to make, we
• 29:47
  want to go about things independently, but we just need,
• 29:49
  we need money to kind of fund us while we do it.
• 29:51
  So that's the idea there. Talking of big figures, big
• 29:57
  financial figures, big headline figures, YouTube have made
• 30:02
  almost $9 billion in AD revenues in the third quarter of 2024.
• 30:08
  Well done then, is this, is this bigger and better than ever
• 30:12
  before? Is this where and is this where
• 30:16
  all the marketing and advertising money is ending up
• 30:18
  then on YouTube? Yeah, it's a heartwarming story
• 30:22
  of a tech giant making loads of money, which I know everyone
• 30:25
  loves, but yeah. So Alphabet is a parent company
• 30:28
  of Google, which is a parent company of YouTube.
• 30:30
  So whenever Alphabet does financial results, always has a
• 30:33
  line saying YouTube ad revenues. And those, yeah, they're up like
• 30:37
  12.2% year on year to just over $8.9 billion.
• 30:41
  So more than 10% of all the money that Alphabet makes, that
• 30:44
  includes Google ads, all those things, more than 10% of that is
• 30:48
  from YouTube ads. And there was a really, there
• 30:51
  was a stat actually in the financial saying over the last
• 30:53
  year, YouTube has made more than $50 billion from ads and
• 30:57
  subscriptions. And that's where YouTube Music
• 30:59
  at streaming service comes in because they sell subscriptions
• 31:01
  there. So I did some crunching on this,
• 31:04
  some number crunching. So YouTube's done about just
• 31:07
  under $35 billion in the last year in advertisements.
• 31:10
  That's how where's money comes from, which means around $15
• 31:13
  billion from subscriptions, which it's not just YouTube
• 31:17
  Music, it's also a thing called YouTube Premium, which is if you
• 31:20
  want to subscribe to YouTube and have no ads, you don't
• 31:23
  necessarily do it for the music, but music is part of it.
• 31:26
  And then Spotify last year did $12.6 billion in subscription
• 31:31
  revenues. So you can kind of see here and
• 31:34
  it's not the same period. I'm not comparing like a
• 31:36
  different period like, you know, one is.
• 31:38
  But you can kind of see that YouTube and Spotify subscription
• 31:41
  businesses are both are growing and they're kind of competing
• 31:45
  like it's, they're, they're the two big.
• 31:47
  So that is from the music industry point of view, it's
• 31:50
  good. And actually the music people,
• 31:51
  music industry people love YouTube at the moment because
• 31:53
  they used to hate it. There used to be a real
• 31:56
  Pitchfork's sort of mania of saying YouTube is ripping us
• 32:00
  off. There was a thing called the
• 32:01
  value gap. They talked about of like,
• 32:02
  YouTube has loads of music. It gets played a lot and they
• 32:05
  pay us not much. And over the last five years
• 32:08
  since it launched its subscription music service, that
• 32:11
  has turned round. And now if you see Universal
• 32:13
  Music Group, their boss Lucy and Grange, he goes, we love
• 32:16
  YouTube. It's doing brilliantly.
• 32:18
  So that is kind of the story here.
• 32:20
  Although the ad, the ad dollars was the kind of headline.
• 32:22
  Yeah, YouTube has has got a really, really big growing music
• 32:27
  business and that is money that is coming back to the industry.
• 32:33
  Finally, for this episode, a new study shows that independent
• 32:37
  labels and self releasing artists make up almost half of
• 32:42
  the total recorded music market in terms of ownership.
• 32:47
  Yeah. So this comes from Media
• 32:48
  Research or this consultancy firm who they know their onions
• 32:51
  when it comes to kind of market research and understand the
• 32:54
  industry. And yeah, it's about non majors,
• 32:57
  which is independent labels, but also artists who are self
• 32:59
  releasing. So it's everything that's not
• 33:01
  the three global major labels. And yeah, so it's it's
• 33:04
  interesting that there's two stats here.
• 33:06
  So one stat is that the non major music was 34.2% of
• 33:12
  recorded music last year. But that doesn't include
• 33:15
  independent music that's distributed by the major labels.
• 33:18
  So Universal, Sony, Warner, they all have like distributors in
• 33:21
  house who distribute independent music.
• 33:23
  If you include that as non major, it's 46.7% of the market,
• 33:28
  so about 14.3 billion, which kind of tallies with something
• 33:32
  Spotify said back in February, which I think we talked about at
• 33:34
  the time when Spotify said half its payouts last year went to
• 33:37
  independent music. So this kind of tallies with
• 33:40
  that. So which is is kind of at a time
• 33:44
  when like independent labels are arguing with TikTok, for
• 33:47
  example, it's a reminder of independent music is important,
• 33:51
  it's very lucrative, It's a big part of the market.
• 33:54
  But the other thing, the media did this release announcing this
• 33:57
  report and they said the other thing is that so independent
• 34:00
  music distributed by major labels.
• 34:02
  So again, the stuff coming through universals in house
• 34:04
  division and so on, that was worth $3.8 billion last year.
• 34:09
  So as weird as it sounds to say it, independent music is a
• 34:12
  nearly $4 billion business for the major labels.
• 34:16
  And that was last year, which kind of whenever we whenever we
• 34:19
  talk about universal buying a distributor, when we talk about
• 34:23
  these kind of arguments, This is why independent music is
• 34:27
  actually quite a big part of a big growing part of their
• 34:30
  businesses now. And there's that's, that's
• 34:32
  useful context for anything we talk about distributors or
• 34:36
  independent music or lawsuits. So, yeah, so it's kind of
• 34:40
  interesting, but I think it's good.
• 34:41
  It's good for Indies, I think, because I think if you're
• 34:43
  independent, a big part of the job of people like Merlin and
• 34:47
  AIM and the independent music bodies is to say look how
• 34:51
  important independent music is, Look how how people, it's not
• 34:53
  just that it's critically acclaimed and people love it,
• 34:55
  it's about how economically valuable it is.
• 34:58
  So this kind of stat is actually really good for them to kind of
• 35:01
  waiver whoever they're talking to when they're talking to
• 35:03
  politicians, when they're negotiating with streaming
• 35:06
  services. This is the value of independent
• 35:08
  music. It's really important.
• 35:11
  And that will do it for this episode.
• 35:14
  Thank you very much for listening.
• 35:16
  As always, if you have enjoyed the show, and we hope you have,
• 35:19
  please do subscribe in your podcast app and give us a review
• 35:22
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• 35:25
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• 35:28
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• 35:32
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• 35:35
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• 35:39
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• 35:42
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• 35:54
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• 35:57
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• 36:01
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• 36:05
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• 36:09
  Till next time, take care everybody.
• 36:11
  Cheerio.